In the U.S., the end of June feels like the official beginning of the summer birds have already committed to months ago. We’re heading into some slow birding, so start coming up with good ideas for the absence of many good birds.

My strategy for managing the summer slump has been to chase county birds. Common Gallinule is inexplicably uncommon in the greater Rochester area but does pop up at a couple of reliable spots. My timing to tick the American moorhen off my Monroe County list couldn’t have been better, as encountered multiple adults with clutches of fuzzy moorchicks! Corey was camping in the northernmost of the Catskills this weekend so despite not going out of his way to find birds he still saw plenty. Of the birds that made the forest he was camping in home Corey’s favorites were the Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers that used his campsite as a highway between their favored feeding locations and their nest, at least as far as he could figure out. The sapsuckers were easily his Best Bird of the Weekend.

How about you? What was your best bird of the weekend? Tell us in the comments section about the rarest, loveliest, or most fascinating bird you observed. If you’ve blogged about your weekend experience, you should include a link in your comment.

Written by Mike
Mike is a leading authority in the field of standardized test preparation, but he's also a traveler who fully expects to see every bird in the world. Besides founding 10,000 Birds in 2003, Mike has also created a number of other entertaining but now extirpated nature blog resources, particularly the Nature Blog Network and I and the Bird.